


Cheating the Odds

by SectoBoss



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Trolls, book hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6188191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all missions can end in success. With some, you’re lucky if they don’t end in disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheating the Odds

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on what might have happened during Sigrun and Emil’s book run during chapter 10.

**Vitter:** subspecies of vættur. A rare but exceptionally dangerous troll that resides in burrows underground. Their nests are covered in a layer of topsoil or snow and it is believed that the vitter tracks prey through vibrations in the ground. Thought to be hatched from old world burial pits dug in the first weeks of the plague.

 

* * *

 

_Copenhagen, Year 0  
_

There are four of them, stood around the pit in the weak morning light.

Two soldiers in their camouflage gear, a doctor in her white coat, a priest in his dark cassock. All of them weary, worn, battered and broken by the last few weeks. Their clothes are threadbare and stained, the men have the beginnings of ragged beards, all four of them stand slightly stooped as if weighed down by what’s happened to the world.

It’s been… how long has it been? Since the plague came from the south, since they closed the borders far too late, since everything fell apart so fast? Two weeks, maybe three?

Has it only been that long?

They don’t measure time by the calendar any more. More important milestones have come and gone. For example, it has now been four days – or five? – since the infected started to die in their droves. And there’s no sense wasting hospital beds on corpses.

The two soldiers have spent all night digging this hole, in a patch of waste ground at the back of an old library the army hurriedly converted into a hospital. They piled all the books into boxes and dumped them outside to rot, set up mattresses on the floors and desks, hung IV drips above them like telegraph wires. Did what they could, until they ran out of anaesthetic, of disinfectant, of everything.

Now they’re dying, more every day, but even more are coming in and they need the space. So they dug the pit, the soldiers swearing and sweating as they picked apart the frozen soil with their shovels, the doctor and the priest silent as they hauled body after body out of the building and piled them up next to where the soldiers worked. At first they tried to lay them out in neat orderly rows. But there were too many, and by the end they simply dumped each corpse on a pile and went back in for the next one.

By the time they are finished the sun’s staining the horizon and they stand around the pit, none of them quite willing to acknowledge what comes next.

The soldiers and the doctor hiss and wheeze through military-issue gas masks, heavy-duty filters diligently scrubbing the air. The priest, cowering behind one of those flimsy cotton face masks the government handed out to civilians back when there still was a government, eyes them with a mix of envy and fear.

“So… are you supposed to say something before we carry on?” the older of the two soldiers rasps through her mask, turning to face the priest. The young man doesn’t know how to read the rank badges on her shoulders but he thinks she’s a sergeant.

The priest thinks for a moment.

“God help us?” he offers at last, the faint creasing round his eyes the only indication that under the mask he’s pulling a tired, wretched grin.

The sergeant snorts with almost-laughter and the doctor chuckles, a dry cracking sound that would sound awful even without the thick material over her face. Even the younger soldier, a private who spent all of yesterday sobbing, manages a small smile that his gas mask hides.

“Good enough,” the sergeant drawls, and they get to work.

The pit fills quickly, body after body tumbling down into it, each one tied up with a few scraps of cloth to make them pack better. The sun hasn’t even finished rising and already they’re halfway through, making good time. At this rate, the sergeant thinks, they will be done before anyone inside wakes up and hears what they’re doing.

Suddenly the private stops and peers down.

“Did that one just move?” he asks uncertainly, pointing at a human-shaped mass of broken skin and weeping pustules that looks the same as all the others.

“No. They’re all dead,” the doctor says flatly. She’s glad for the mask. It hides her eyes, hides the lie in them. Privately, she doesn’t put much stock in the word ‘dead’ anymore, not after what she’s seen the Rash do.

“Should we… make sure?” the private asks nervously.

“You can if you want to,” the sergeant replies. “But I haven’t got many more for this,” she adds, tapping the pistol holstered on her hip meaningfully, “and I don’t want to waste any on a corpse.”

The private just nods, and they carry on.

They’re patting the soil down on top of the pit by the time the day finishes dawning and they stay for a moment after they’re finished, like workers pausing in satisfaction at a job well done. From inside the makeshift hospital building the first shouts and cries of the day start to filter out. The infected, waking from whatever fitful sleep they got during the night, and the doctors, already overwhelmed by the task ahead.

One by one they go back inside.

 

* * *

 

_Year 90_

“And _that_ ,” Sigrun said, wagging her finger at Emil like his teachers back home, “is why you never pull sentry duty on an empty stomach. That’s Rule 23.”

Emil nodded, only half-listening to her anecdote, as he picked his way over a chunk of rubble half-buried under the snow. A small fragment of concrete gave way under his boot and he slipped forwards, flailing his arms madly for a second before he regained his balance. A jolt of pain shot up his leg from where Mikkel had accidentally hit him the day before and he winced and gritted his teeth. To his immense relief Sigrun, a few paces ahead of him, didn’t notice.

“There are a lot of rules in the army, Emil,” Sigrun continued as he trotted to catch up with her. “You can’t have a good army without rules.”

Emil hadn’t exactly pegged Sigrun as the rule-abiding sort. He glanced over at her and some of the incredulity on his face must have shown.

“Not rules like ‘salute your commanding officers’ or ‘everyone takes turns to clean the toilets’,” she said. “Those are silly. If you want to become officer material one day, Emil, take my advice and don’t follow those. I mean, I haven’t, and look where I am now!”

They both looked around, at the decaying streets of Copenhagen, old stone crumbling around them as the wind whistled tunelessly through the ruins.

“Anyway,” Sigrun said quickly, “the point is that there are rules and then there are _Rules_. Understand?”

“...Yes?” Emil said, drawing the word out uncertainly.

“Like Rule number 1,” Sigrun started as she clambered up onto the sagging ruin of a car to get a better look down the street ahead of them. She squinted into the distance, mapping out a path between the rusted wrecks that filled the road, probably the aftermath of an evacuation that turned bad.

“Stand still and stay silent?” Emil offered. “I know that one.”

Sigrun looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. “Where did you learn that?” she asked as she hopped back down off the car, landing next to him with a dull _thump_ of compacting snow. “That sounds like something an Icelander would say,” she grinned. “Nah, Rule 1 is simpler than that. Rule 1 is kill them, before they kill you.”

“That needs to be a rule?” Emil asked as they set off again, following her between the half-buried cars and vans.

“Yup. You’d be surprised how many people I’ve seen not follow it.”

They reached the end of the street and rounded a corner, Sigrun checking the rough sketch map in her pocket to make sure they were still on the right track. Ahead of them lay a three-storey brick building set slightly back from the road. The Danish for ‘Community Library’ could still just be seen above its door, cracked plastic letters held into the brickwork by rusty screws.

“Bingo,” Sigrun smiled. “You keep watch out here, I’m going to see if the front door works.”

Emil unshouldered his rifle and leaned back against the building’s wall, keeping a wary eye on the street as Sigrun peered in through the door’s dirty glass. The sun was still low enough in the sky to throw long shadows along the ground. After the last two times they had gone book hunting Emil was in no hurry to get ambushed by anything yet again.

Sigrun, her hands cupped around her eyes to keep out the sun’s glare, squinted through the glass and then gave the door a hearty shove with her shoulder. The wood groaned in protest.

“Door’s locked,” she said, turning to Emil. “But the place isn’t barricaded.”

Emil looked at the door and felt a little bit like Sigrun was testing him. “So… it might be safe?” he ventured at last.

“Yup,” Sigrun said. “Locked but not barricaded tends to mean the owners left but planned on coming back. So it should be empty.” She leaned on the door casually and looked up and down at the building’s solid brick walls. “Of course,” she added, “it’s not a bad place for a nest. Something nasty might have moved in since.”

Emil tried to hide his nervous gulp. He sometimes felt like Sigrun enjoyed showing the rookie the ropes a bit too much.

“Give me a hand with the door, then,” she said. Emil slung his rifle across his back and together they braced themselves against the wood, Emil’s boots slipping momentarily on a thin layer of ice under the snow.

“Three… two… one… _heave!_ ”

The wood and metal creaked as the pair of them pushed as hard as they could, but the lock held fast. After a few moments and some inventive swearing from Sigrun they gave up.

“Damn,” she gasped, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow as Emil slumped against the door. “They built to last in the old world, didn’t they?” She spat and gave the door a dirty look. “OK, try again! Three… two… one… _heave!”_

This time they had better luck. There was a crack like a gunshot as the door gave way. The lock snapped and the hinges burst out of the doorframe, sending splinters flying. The door toppled inwards and Sigrun and Emil followed it, yelping as they overbalanced. Sigrun flung out an arm to catch herself and her bandages snagged on a rusted screw sticking out from the wood. Emil tried to do the same but his fingers clutched at empty air and he collapsed face-first on top of the door.

There was a few seconds’ silence as the dust settled.

“Remind me to bring the crowbar with us next time,” Sigrun muttered at last as she ripped her unravelled bandages away from the wall. She wound the remains of them back around her arm as best she could and stuffed the rest into a pocket. At her feet Emil sat up with a groan and she stuck out a hand to help him to his feet.

“Well, we’re in now,” she said with a slightly forced grin as Emil dusted himself down and patted his hair back into place. “Let’s see what the old world left for us, eh?”

 

* * *

 

Two hours later they emerged, blinking in the afternoon sunlight, sweaty and dirty and in low spirits.

The old world had left them all but nothing.

The row upon row of silent beds they had found on each floor testified to the building being a hospital of some kind – or at least, that’s what someone had tried to turn it into just before the end. The corpses in each of the beds told the rest of the story. Sigrun had conducted a quick sweep of the ruin while Emil stayed put on the ground floor, pointing his rifle at shadows and trying to convince himself that the dead couldn’t hurt him.

Sigrun had come back with a foul expression on her face and given him the bad news. Barely a book to be found on the whole building, just empty shelves and mummified bodies. At best maybe a dozen, piled up in a corner on the second floor where someone had forgotten to get rid of them.

It had gone downhill from there. Just as Emil had been wondering if this mission could get any worse, a rumbling crash had echoed up from below and the whole building had shuddered like something heavy had hit it. Creeping warily down the stairs with their rifles raised, they had been greeted by the dismaying sight of a pile of rotten rubble where the front door had once stood. Half the ceiling had collapsed down across it. Broken beams stuck out of the wreckage like snapped bones and a thick cloud of dust hung in the air. Sigrun guessed that their clumsy entry had knocked some vital support out.

“We’re lucky it didn’t come down on top of us,” she said matter-of-factly as Emil shot nervous glances at the ceiling and hurried off to find them a new way out.

Neither of them saw the shadows flickering around the heap of rubble, waiting patiently for them to take the only other exit.

They ended up clambering out of a ground-floor window on the other side of the building, Sigrun losing more of her bandages and Emil nicking his palms on the broken glass. At last they started making their way back to the tank, across a large patch of open ground that Sigrun was confident would lead them back to one of the roads they had taken earlier that day.

Emil trailed a few metres behind Sigrun, his mind on other things – mostly, how nice it would be to get back to the tank, lie down in bed and just write the rest of the day off. Sigrun had warned him a couple of days ago that not all their missions would unlock treasure troves and that he would do well to get used to failure, but that was cold comfort at the moment. _All this for some books on nonsense subjects,_ he thought dismally to himself. _What the hell is ‘hydrogen fuel’ anyway?  
_

His foot snagged on something.

He didn’t trip, he wasn’t walking fast enough for that, but he did stumble a little and another crackle of pain ran up his leg. He scowled and looked down, brushing the thin dusting of snow aside with his foot to see what was under it. What he saw made him frown in confusion. It looked like a vine, like ivy or some other climbing plant, but without any leaves – just a fleshy stem so pale it was almost the colour of the snow. It was only a centimetre or so in diameter and ran horizontally along the ground, disappearing under the snow either side of the little patch he had cleared.

_Some weird plant or something,_ Emil decided. Ahead of him Sigrun had realised he wasn’t following and turned round. “Emil!” she called, annoyed. “Keep up!”

Emil looked at the vine again. There was a bulge in it halfway along, like a small tuber. The surface of this node was ridged in a way that reminded him of something. He knelt down and squinted at it, trying to place it. Behind him Sigrun’s expression turned wary and she started to walk back towards it. “What is it?” she asked, quieter. “What have you found?”

Recognition came to Emil in one awful blow. That wasn’t a plant, he realised. It was a finger, grotesquely elongated. The bulge he had found was a knuckle.

His leapt to his feet and turned to Sigrun, his mouth already opening to shout out a warning, but he was too late. The ground where she had been stood not half a second ago exploded upwards in a spray of dirt and snow. Acting on instinct Sigrun threw herself forward, not even pausing to look behind her, making it look as if the eruption had blasted her off her feet. She hit the ground in a cloud of powdered snow, sending the books she had been carrying flying. From behind her came an awful noise.

Emil screamed as he saw what was clawing its way out of the ground. A human torso, grown bloated and fat, anchored into the ground like it had taken root. Mandibles and palps that had engulfed its head rattled and twitched and antennae of gristle and sinew waved blindly in the air. Its arms were splayed out to either side of it, palms-down to let its fingers run along the ground, and it hauled itself upwards with ragged new limbs.

Sigrun swore and scrabbled forwards, ducking away from the troll as it hissed and screeched. Emil took an instinctive step backwards as the troll bent down and stabbed a scythed claw into the ground just shy of Sigrun’s legs. She swore again and rolled to one side, trying to keep out of its reach, fighting for purchase on the loose snow.

_“Emil!”_ she roared. _“Shoot the bastard!”  
_

With fingers that suddenly seemed ridiculously clumsy Emil tugged his rifle off his shoulder and hoisted it with trembling hands. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins, hot and liquid like molten metal. The sights jumped and twitched in front of his eyes as he took careful aim. He didn’t even want to think about a shot going wide with Sigrun this close to the troll. The safety came off with a _clack_ and he squeezed the trigger.

The gun roared and jumped in his hands. Emil yelped in shock. Bullets whipped and whined through the air. They raised small puffs of snow where they hit the ground, knocked chunks out of the brick walls that surrounded them. The troll recoiled at the noise and Sigrun threw herself down, hands over her head, as bullets sprayed all around her. She bellowed and cursed, screaming at Emil to watch where the hell he was shooting.

Then the rifle’s chamber clicked empty. Sigrun was the first to react, darting forward while the troll was still recovering, still on her hands and knees. Emil stared stupidly at the weapon in his hands, as if there wasn’t a ravenous monster just a few short metres away. _“Vad fan!?”_ he gasped, then realised what had happened in a flash. The gun, the _stupid Danish gun_ , wasn’t built to the same standard as the Swedish ones he’d trained with. He’d tried to take the safety off and go to single-shot and accidentally set it to full auto instead.

The troll snarled and slobbered as it shook its head to clear the ringing in what was left of its ears. Its compound jaws went _clatter-clack_ and it lunged forward again but this time Sigrun was well out of range of its grasping claws. It strained uselessly against whatever was anchoring it into the ground below. Sigrun scrambled to her feet and unslung her own rifle, going down onto one knee and aiming in one fluid motion that Emil enviously thought made it look so easy. She sighted, aimed, flicked the safety off and for a moment everything was still as her finger tightened on the trigger. The troll rattled in frustration and reached for her. From where Emil was stood it looked like the two were making eye contact, even though there wasn’t an eye left in the drooling wreckage of the troll’s face, and he almost thought she smiled at it.

From within the troll came a wet gurgling noise. In the half second before Sigrun opened fire it twisted, contorted, flexed and then its ribcage hinged open like the jaws of some deep-sea fish. Emil found himself staring at the cords and coils of the thing’s overgrown guts. With an awful sucking sound it heaved, gasped, and spewed its intestines out across the ground towards them in a shower of blood and pus.

Both Sigrun and Emil were so startled by this they only thought to dive out of the way at the last moment. Sigrun’s shot went wide, whirring past the troll’s head and raising another puff of pulverised masonry behind it. Emil landed heavily on his side and snow filled his vision. Ropes of meat splattered down next to him and the thick stink of rot made him gag. Hurriedly he kicked them away from him and sat up, blinking snow out of his eyes.

Across from him Sigrun was sat up already, aiming another shot, but as Emil watched in horror the troll’s guts writhed across the ground towards her like a nest of snakes and wrapped themselves around her boot. With a strong jerk they tugged her forwards, overbalancing her and dragging her towards the troll’s waiting claws and champing, hungry ribs.

_“Fy faen!”_ Sigrun bellowed, her face contorted into a grimace, and rolled onto her front. She tried to get a grip on something to stop the troll from pulling her further but the frozen ground under the snow offered no handholds. Her gun fell from her hands as she reached for the knife on her belt and yanked it free. She started slashing at the squirming flesh that had her left ankle in a vice grip, sawing at the rubbery intestines and the muscular sheaths that had grown around them.

For a brief second Emil and Sigrun’s eyes met as he clambered to his feet, his leg screaming from where he’d fallen awkwardly to avoid the troll’s shapeless limbs. He was astonished by the look in them. No fear, no terror, just a strange calm fury that this pile of old-world meat was stopping her from doing her job properly.

The troll had managed to drag her halfway towards it by the time Emil had staggered the distance to where Sigrun had dropped her gun. By now Sigrun was sawing away at the guts that held her like a woman possessed but for every one she chopped away another seemed to writhe up and take its place. The troll leered at her with its eyeless face, its mandibles working so fast they sent sprays of spit pattering onto the snow and soil around it, its mouth watering at the prospect of food. Sigrun just snarled back at it.

Emil reached the gun and bent down to scoop it up but his leg gave way and he toppled down onto his knees with a little whimper of pain. _Pick it up, aim, safety off, shoot._ Old training mantras from Sweden fought the pain in his legs back down. _Single shot._ He gripped the rifle, its metal parts ice-cold on his chapped and raw hands. _Don’t you dare miss._

For a second he imagined the look on the others’ faces if he came back alone. The thought alone was enough to make his stomach churn.

He raised the gun, still on his knees like in old-world prayer, and sighted down the barrel. Beyond the stubby sights he could see Sigrun just a hand’s span from the troll’s claws. As he watched one flashed down faster than he could follow. She parried it with her dagger and there was a dull _clang-crunch_ of bone yielding to steel. The troll cackled and brandished its other claws.

_Clack._ Safety off. _Clack_ , again. Single shot fire. Despite the cold a bead of sweat trickled into Emil’s eye but he didn’t have the time to clear it.

He fired.

The gun jerked, once, and the shot echoed around the confines of the buildings that surrounded them. Emil had aimed for the troll’s head. A small hole appeared in the troll’s stomach and a wet spray of red mist and white chunks burst out from its back.

The troll howled and toppled backwards. Its claws jerked up as if it was trying to ward off the bullet that Emil had already shot and its intestines lost their grip on Sigrun’s ankle. With a roar of effort she yanked her leg free and scrambled backwards, kicking up snow behind her as she lumbered to her feet. She turned and charged towards Emil with cold determination on her face.

For a second Emil thought that she was so caught up in the fight that she’d mistaken him for another troll trying to sneak up on her. He was about to fling himself out of her way when she skidded to a halt in front of him, tossed her knife aside and held out her hands.

“The gun!” she shouted, her voice hoarse. “Emil! Give me the gun now!”

He shoved it into her arms like he was afraid it might bite him if he held it for too long. Behind her he could see the troll righting itself, pulling its guts back in with a thick slurping noise, getting ready to throw them again, realising it was now all-or-nothing. Sigrun took the gun and whirled back round to face the troll. It roared defiantly at her as she squeezed the trigger.

_Crack-crack-crack!_ Three shots in quick succession, all finding their mark. The troll’s shoulder, belly and finally throat suddenly sprouted holes that leaked blood and black slime. Fragments of meat span through the air. The snow hissed and boiled where the hot blood spattered across it. The troll’s wail turned to an empty gasp as its windpipe collapsed.

Slowly, like a tree going down, the troll toppled to the ground and lay motionless.

Silence so thick it was deafening descended around Sigrun and Emil.

“Is… is it dead?” Emil asked at last.

“Let’s make sure,” Sigrun said, wiping the sweat and dirt from her brow. “Keep me covered,” she added, handing the rifle back to Emil and picking up her knife from where she’d dropped it.

Emil watched the troll unblinkingly as Sigrun crept close to it. She prodded one of its claws with her boot, leaned over and looked at its head. At last, satisfied, she knelt down next to its head and murmured something Emil couldn’t hear at the distance he was stood at.

Her blade glinted like fire in the late afternoon sun as she brought it down almost delicately onto the troll’s head. There was a quiet _crunch_ as it disappeared to the hilt into the troll’s forehead. The body twitched once or twice and then went still.

She looked up and beckoned Emil over. As he reached the ground that the troll had sprung from she pointed down and he followed her finger. The colour that had just begun to seep back into his face drained away again.

The troll was buried to its hips in a pit of corpses, like it was emerging from hell itself. Emil felt nauseous as he took in the heap of bodies, mummified and mangled almost beyond recognition.

“They put this one in a burial pit,” Sigrun said, sounding almost astonished. “They put it in a damn _larder_.” She sighed, and then her sigh became a quiet chuckle. “Rule 5, Emil. The old world existed to make our job harder than it needs to be.”

All Emil could offer in response was a weak smile as he tried hard not to vomit everywhere.

Sigrun stood up from her crouch and was suddenly all business. “Right then!” she said, dusting her hands off. “Let’s get the books we dropped and get out of here. With the amount of noise we made here, half the city’s going to come calling the minute the sun goes down. I want to be far away before _that_ happens.”

They were scooping the snow-stained books back into satchels and rucksacks when Sigrun spoke again, as if only just remembering what she was going to say.

“Oh, and Emil?”

“Yeah?” Emil asked, looking up from stuffing a thick volume on geology into his backpack.

“Good work,” she grinned, jabbing her thumb at the collapsed body of the troll behind them.

Emil smiled awkwardly. “Thanks,” he said, blushing.

“I wouldn’t have made it without you,” Sigrun said breezily, gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder, and carried on packing her bags.

Emil thought about those words as they started back towards the tank. She’d said them so flippantly, like she was thanking him for lending her his comb or something like that. It took him a while to realise that in her line of work, you probably said that to people all the time. He wondered how often she’d stared her own death in the face, how often she’d cheated the odds and walked away with nothing but a new scar and that slightly manic grin plastered across her face.

Sigrun started up the chatter again soon enough, the excess adrenaline in her blood working its way through her. “Did I ever tell you about what we found in Bergen?” she asked. “No? Well, it was sometime in the winter of 86…”

A narrow path took them from the open ground to the road in front of the library, and they began to retrace their steps home.

 

* * *

 

As the sun went down, the library cast a long shadow over the ground behind it.

And from the shadows, the shades emerged.

They wafted across the snow and dirt, pausing to taste the blood drops that made red archipelagos in a white sea of snow. As the shadow of the building crawled slowly towards the troll they drifted closer it. They took their time. There was no rush.

The troll was not dead. A tiny, withered hindbrain buried deep within tried desperately to get the broken body to respond. All it got for its efforts were a few lethargic twitches.

The shadows massed around, waiting for the sunset to bring them closer. The troll in turn tried to flee, out of the shadow and into the sun’s scorching safety.

Eventually the building’s shadow washed over it and it found itself surrounded. Eyes like holes in smoke watched it with icy contempt. The troll gibbered and pleaded through its ruined throat.

One of the shadows reached into the troll, clutched the tiny mind inside, and began to squeeze. The others watched with cruel satisfaction. At last a wet _crack_ echoed. The troll spasmed. The shadow that had snuffed it out stepped back.

In the sky the sun sank even lower. Moving like ink through water, the shadows took to the streets of the city, billowing along walls and seeping down roads they still remembered.

They used the footprints in the snow as their guide.


End file.
